272 HAMAMELIDE^. 



century) as signifying Liquid Storax. This and other Arabian physicians 

 were also familiar with the same substance under the name of Miha 

 {may a), and also knew how and whence it was obtained.^ 



A curious account of the collecting of Liquid Storax from the tree 

 Zygia, and from another tree called Stourika, is given in the travels 

 through Asia Minor to Palestine of the Russian abbot of Tver in A.D. 

 1113-1115.2 



The wide exportation and ancient use of Liquid Storax are very 

 remarkable : even in the first century, as appears by the author of the 

 Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, Storax, by which term there can be but 

 little doubt Liquid Storax was intended, was exported by the Red Sea 

 to India. Whether the Storax and Storax Isaurica offered to the Church 

 of Rome under St. Silvester, A.D. 314-335, by the emperor Constantine,^ 

 was Liquid Storax or the more precious resin of Sty rax offi^cinalis L., 

 is a point we cannot determine, That the Chinese used the drug 

 was a fact known to Garcia de Orta (1535-63): Bretschneider* has 

 shown from Chinese sources that, together with olibanum and myrrh, it 

 was imported by the Arabs into China during the Ming dynasty, A.D. 

 1368-1628. This trade is still carried on : the drug is conveyed byway 

 of the Red Sea to Bombay, and thence shipped to China. Official 

 returns show that the quantity thus exported from Bombay in the year 

 1856-57 was 13,328 lb. In the time of Kampfer (1690-92), Liquid 

 Storax was one of the most profitable articles of shipment to Japan.* 



Liquid Storax is known in the East, at least in the price-currents and 

 trade statistics of Europeans, by the strange-sounding name of Rose 

 Malloes {Rosa M alias, Rosum, Alloes, Rosmal), a designation for it in 

 use in the time of Garcia de Orta. Clusius*' considered it to be Arabic, 

 which, however, the scholars whom we have consulted do not allow. 

 Others identify it with Rasamala, the Malay name for Altingia 

 excelsa. (See further on.) 



The botanical origin of Liquid Storax was long a perplexing question 

 to pharmacologists. It was correctly determined by Krinos, but his 

 information on the subject published in a Greek newspaper in 1841, and 

 repeated by Kost^ in 1855,''' attracted no attention in Western Europe. 

 The question was also investigated by one of the authors of the present 

 work, whose observations, together with a figure of Liquidambar 

 orientalis Miller, were published in 1857.* 



Method of Extraction — The extraction of Liquid Storax is carried 

 on in the forests of the south-west of Asia Minor, chiefly by a tribe of 

 wandering Turcomans called YuruJcs. The process has been described 

 on the authority of Maltass and McCraith of Smyrna, and of Campbell, 

 British Consul at Rhodes.^ The outer bark is said to be first removed 

 from the trunk of the tree and rejected; the inner is then scraped 

 off with a peculiar iron knife or scraper, and thrown into pits until a 



1 /&w ^aytor, Sontheimer's transl. ii. 539. o/<Ae ^ra6s, etc., Lond. 1871. 19. 



2 Noroff, Pderinage en Terre Sainte de ' Hist, of Japan, ed. Scheuchzer, i. 353. 

 Vlgoum^ne rmse Daniel, St. Petersb. 164. ^ Exoticorum Libri, 245. 



4°. — The passagehas been kindly abstracted "^ 'Eyx^'P'^'o" *ap/iaKoXoyias, vw6 N. 



for us by Prof. Heyd of Stuttgart. Kwtnfi, 1855. 356. 



* Vignolius, Liber Pontificalis, Romse, i. ^ Hanbury, Pharm. Journ. xvi. (1857) 

 (1724) 94. — The ancient Isauria was in 417. 461, and iv. (1863) 436; iSc/eHCf Papers, 

 Cilicia, the country of Styrax officinalis L. 127-150. 



* On the knoioledge possessed by the Chinese » Hanbury, I.e. 



